Part of famed high-wire act
DRAFT ANALYST MEL KIPER JR. DISCUSSES SOME OPTIONS FOR THE DOLPHINS,
Carla Wallenda, a member of “The Flying Wallendas” high-wire act and the last surviving child of the famed troupe’s founder, has died at the age of 85.
Her son, Rick Wallenda, said on social media she died Saturday in Sarasota of natural causes. She was the daughter of Karl Wallenda, who founded the troupe in Germany before moving to the United States in 1928. She was the aunt of aerialist Nik Wallenda.
Carla Wallenda was born on Feb. 13, 1936, and appeared in a newsreel in 1939 as she learned how to walk the wire, with her father and mother, Mati, looking on.
In the 1960s, three of her family members were killed in accidents while performing. Her brother was paralyzed. Her husband, Richard Guzman, died in 1972 when he fell 60 feet during a performance in West Virginia. Her father died in 1978, falling while walking a wire across a street in Puerto Rico.
Still, she would not be deterred from performing.
“Accidents can happen anyplace,” she told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 2014. “I have to make a living and this is the only way I know or want to.
I’ve done waitress work and hated every minute of it. Why should I go and do a job that I hate?”
She worked through her 70s, including in a Miley Cyrus music video. She finally retired in 2017 at the age of 81 after appearing on a Steve Harvey TV special, doing a headstand atop a 80-foot sway pole.
She is survived by her son, two daughters, Rietta Wallenda Jordan and Valerie Wallenda, and 16 grandchildren. A second son, Mario, died in 1993.
Amara, @CryptidAmara